Patchwork Pie

Patchwork Pie

   I overbought apples, again. There are wrinkles pulling their red-orange skins together in the brown bagthey came in . This time gluttony is a good thing. We’re three days past market day, trying to limit the number of times we open the door to our home. We have enough milk and a pasta dinner stashed in the pantry for a day like this. The smoke is not letting up, for a week and a half it has poked its fingers through cracks between our front and back door, our mail slot. My cell rings, it’s Finn. I ask him if we should make a pie. He answers with the correct answer. He says they are on their way.

       A few minutes later a knock on the back door. Greg looks at my cutting board and immediately sees chaos.”Why are you doing this?” “Why not? I have apples and we need dessert.” I begin to peel away the crows feet from the forgotten Fugis, underneath their flesh turns out to score delightfully on the MOHs scale. I bat my eyelashes several times and lower my voice a couple notches. “Honey, can you make your famous pie crust?” Greg sighs more than once. He pulls down his favorite pie crust book and begins shifting through pages. Zennen peaks over my shoulder spotting the naked Fugis sitting in a glass bowl.” What are you making”? He asks so sweetly I miss the bulging eyes, saliva and exposed fangs. “Can I help?” “Sure, I say” so proud to have trained my sons correctly. I leave him with a knife, bowl, cutting board and enough sugary apples to slice for a handsomely-sized pie for four. I walk a few paces to the other side of the kitchen.

       “We don’t have any shortening”. My husband’s eye brows try to push me over with this hard fact. Poof! Butter appears out of nowhere and we are suddenly back on track. I start digging into fridge drawers for other objects that can be transformed into dinner. An onion, kale in a plastic container. Bingo! Salad, pasta, we have dinner. AND! Dessert! Fantastic. I notice a wad of dough chilling at 4 degrees celsius. With premonition of a midnight finish time I intercept the ball and place it expertly in the freezer. I do a few more circles in a room with a density of chefs. Steamy penne is placed in a colander in the sink.

       I peer behind me it’s far too silent. A bowl, knife, board and apples sliced in a bowl. Great! He did it! I steer in for a closer look, AGG! Half a bowl! Where did all those slices go! No sign, what-so-ever. A pre-teen with propped up feet and a stinky plastic soccer jersey is sunk in an orange couch with a tiny bulge sitting on top of his pancake belly. Erg! No longer enough apple slices for a pie, turnover, maybe.

      A fairytale froggy leaps forward and ferociously flings a file against four galas fabulously forgotten  in the fridge. Oh Finn! That’s perfect. The final four bring the volume up of requisite apple slices for a pie. A bonefide fall favorite. “When are you thinking to make the pie?” Greg says, “It’s gonna need a couple hours to chill.”Glass half-full and a smirk I chirp “Were good!” “I will roll the crust.” Cinnamon sprinkled, spoonful or so of sugar stirred into the apples. A couple of swats prevent varmint from stealing any more slices. Finn watches me roll out the wad of dough on a wooden plank. Ever so carefully he helps me roll it atop our patchwork product. He insists we stab it several times, to breathe. After forking a circle of air holes and pinching the edges together one more expert Finny chef suggestion: “sprinkle brown sugar on it.” We pinch and sprinkle away. Finally! Ready for the oven. We sit down and wait. Tick tock. Tick tock. Hasta pasta, time for pie. Generous slices for four. We huddle in concentration around our patchwork before saying goodnight and diffusing into our blankets.

Road Companions - Mom Lady, Siri, Stinky boy 1, 2 and 3.

Road Companions – Mom Lady, Siri, Stinky boy 1, 2 and 3.

Phoenix to Williams. Fifteen, no twenty-foot cacti, arms stretched out, finger like, three fingers, four fingers, fingers sprouting on top of fingers. 2500 feet, 3000 feet, 3200 feet, gone. It’s a 20 mile stretch at most is all you have of these lovelies on highway 17 driving to Flagstaff.  Black Canyon City is that the name? I already cannot remember. Climbing, climbing on the 17. It’s funny how you climb so fast out of the city. Zennen is my navigator. Finn is stretched out in the backseat of our Nissan Sentra oophing and pooffing up the mountain trying to keep up with the big rigs going 60 mph. Music choices are made mostly by the navigator and his accomplice. I discover the musical rapper genius inside of Macho Man Randy Savage. Zennen plays songs from YouTube by Triple X, 21 Savage, Soulja Boy, Faddy Mack?, and Drake. I introduce him to 2pac and Biggie. The trees change every 500 feet, we ascend towards Flagstaff. Colors change from browns and greens to yellow, oranges, pinks and reds. Short shrubby sagebrush, pine trees, oaks, cottonwoods. They diversify into lodgepole, pinon, and juniper pines as we take a left onto the 40 heading to Williams. Big trees all around the car. Easy road, mild downhill cruise to Williams. The generous space between the trees allows one to peer deep into the woods, so many woods you can see nothing else but the hills that roll with them.  There must be some big game living in there, soaking up these spacious patches of needles and oak leaves.

Using Siri, we navigate a stretch of highway that rolls with Juniper trees. After a mountain half-carved away showing its manganese treasure at mile 192, we make a turn onto a dirt and lava rock road. The rocks are reddish black and holey, golf-ball sized. Its approaching 2 PM and I just want to feel secure that we have a roof over our heads tonight. I get a bit shaky because the road becomes dusty and soft. I imagine us needing a tow out of a ditch. I back out with gusto, turning up the dusto. I try another path that is more firm and it gets us there. It has more grippy lava rocks. Siri announces “arrived”. A yellow log cabin with front and back porch and an acre of trees in the back. Good, we found it! Now we can get some food.

Cruising in to Williams, we enter the wild west and the Gateway to the Grand Canyon. The boys cheer for KFC – it seems fitting as a lunch for our adventure. We order extra crispy and that is precisely what we get, crispy coating and a side of bones. A biscuit and a diet coke fuels our excavation of the Cowboy town.

A train depot station with enough goodies to lure Zennen and Finn’s promise of their first unborn child. So many desirables and so little time. We manage to escape unscathed by various sharp objects, plastic cards unremoved from wallet. Good job, mom lady. We were less strong upon entry into the National Park Service Store next door where they had a display of Smoky the Bear regalia, namely the orange STB fanny pack and mug. Finn pummels me with a mini binoculars by promising a page of math tonight. It did happen, by the way. Threes times tables. Check.

On to Safeway for pasta, sausage and instant oatmeal. My brother texts me he is coming, a surprise!

In the time we wait, we investigate the backyard of our cabin domicile. It stretches an acre to a railroad track. Short Juniper trees stunted by dryness are scattered about. Black basalt golf balls and pebbles coat the powdery clay and lichens pile up on them fighting over the real estate.

Duane makes it to us by 7, as he predicted early that evening. We greet him with slingshots and pasta with sauce. He pulls out Skittles for our Grand Canyon adventure in the morning. Zennen breaks out the Farkle and we duke it out over the 6 di starting youngest to oldest. Finn insists on farkeling on every turn which makes it harder to reach the game total of 10,000. We bring it down to 5,050 so bedtime is possible. Mom lady wins with a conservative rolling of dice and stopping while she is ahead.  

Naruto Binge Watching

Naruto Binge Watching

A little dog bites the hand of a girl

Zennen and Finn hoot and hurl

Hack, hack, hack

In unison on their back

Me with my tea

Indulging in their glee

Slingshot

Slingshot

Oh, I wonder why I make the choices I do.

Better than Fortenite, a slingshot.

Surgical rubberband, leather strip, forked branch and you have it.

When you stretch the rubberband twice its length and plug in the lava rock,

a snap is made that vibrates an arc of waves across clean Arizona air.

It’s as nice to hear as a viola or a bass, I wonder if someone has ever recorded it into a song?

Wild boys with their forked sticks take off, far back into a wide-open territory.

Space between juniper trees is filled with long yellow grasses with tails that coil into tight rings in the afternoon, in the morning sun they stretch up into perfect vertical lines.

This morning, our second day in Williams is cloud covered, but warmer than yesterday when the temperature dipped below 37F.

Air is free to breathe and the dust is stuck to the ground.

The sun seems to be hinting its arrival.

We are reptiles soaking in the spattering rays, taking time to move.

I spot a creature in the field with a striped beanie zigzagging towards me.

“Can you start making pancakes?”

One more sip of coffee. Stretch. “Yeah, Let’s go.”